Something You Can Keep Around Here

Red faced and covered with snow, Timmy opened his small hand and revealed a snowball he had brought into the house with him. “I’m going to keep this!” he announced with a mixture of confidence and uncertainty. A few minutes later he emerged from his room. His outstretched hand was drenched. Water was running through his fingers onto the floor. Remembering the snowball he once held, he said, “Gee, you can’t keep anything around here!”

Things certainly have a way of melting away. One discovers that, when the years of our lives begin to turn into decades and the realization hits us that 1950 was not 19 but 64 years ago. “You just can’t keep anything around here!” The permanent has a permanent way of becoming the un-permanent, and we begin saying such clichés as, “The only constant is change” and “Nothing remains the same.”Our lives are transient. They are filled with times past. We often find ourselves standing, as Timmy did, with an outstretched hand, drenched with only the memories of that which we once held. “You can’t keep anything around here!”

CONSIDER, the New Testament tells us that amidst all things melting away there is something which never melts, something which remains the same no matter what the temperature: Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrews says it best, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today and forever.” “Yes, there is something you can keep around here!”